GOAL and Soul: Postulating What We Need to Explain Humans

Today's professors have no credible explanations for the physical bodies of humans, and also have no credible explanations for the minds and mental capabilities of humans. But you might get a different impression from reading the boastful writings of professors, in which they offer unbelievable explanations for such things.  Let us look at the physical and mental nature of humans, and look at why conventional explanations for such things fail so badly.

The Physical Nature of Humans: Mountainous Levels of Hierarchical Organization and Purposeful Dynamism

The human body is a system of very great hierarchical organization. Subatomic particles such as protons and electrons are organized into many types of atoms. Atoms are organized into fairly simple molecules such as amino acids. Amino acids are organized into very complex molecules such as proteins, which typically have hundreds of amino acids organized in just the right way to achieve a particular functional effect. Proteins are organized into functional groups of proteins called protein complexes, or organized into cellular building blocks called organelles. Organelles are organized into very complex units called cells, which typically have many hundreds or thousands of organelles.  Cells are organized into tissues. Tissues are organized into organs. Organs are organized into organ systems such as the cardiovascular system and the nervous system. Organ systems and the skeletal system combine to make a full human body. So we have in a human body many different levels of organization.   There are about 200 types of cells used by the body, and more than 20,000 different types of protein molecules used by the human body, each its own separate complex invention. 

There is so much organization in the human body that a human body is more organized than anything humans have ever constructed. Humans know how to make an aircraft carrier with all its jets. But no team of scientists could ever construct a human body atom-by-atom.  The complexity of the assembly operation would be a hundred miles over their heads. 

Do professors have any explanation for the level of organization in human bodies? They do not. Professors attempt to explain the human body by evoking Darwinism and evolution.  But Darwin's theory of evolution is not a theory of biological organization. It is something enormously inferior to such a thing: a mere theory of accumulation. Accumulation was the word Darwin used again and again, not organization.  Darwinism is the mere idea that random changes occur in organisms, with a tiny fraction of these changes being beneficial, and such occasional good changes accumulating.  That is not a theory of organization. 

Referring to the so-called "modern synthesis" or MS, a term meaning modern evolutionary theory, an evolutionary biologist not long ago confessed, "Indeed, the MS theory lacks a theory of organization that can account for the characteristic features of phenotypic evolution, such as novelty, modularity, homology, homoplasy or the origin of lineage-defining body plans."

The visual below clarifies the difference between organization and accumulation. 

The human body is full of a vast number of different types of extremely organized states of matter.  At the microscopic level the main type of organization is that of  protein molecules. The human genome specifies the starting structure of more than 20,000 protein molecules. Each such protein molecule has a particular function in the body, and each such protein molecule is made up of many amino acids. The median number of amino acids in a human protein molecule is about 375 amino acids. 

A very important point is that you will not get a functional protein molecule by some random combination of about 375 amino acids. To be functional, a protein molecule must have what are called folds. When the protein molecule has these folds, it can assume a three-dimensional shape that is necessary for its functionality.

For every possible protein molecule that has folding and has a useful function, there are countless trillions of quadrillions of physically possible protein molecules that do not fold and do have any useful function. Similarly, for every combination of 375 characters or letters that results in a functional computer subroutine, there are countless trillions of quadrillions of possible 375-character combinations that do not result in a functional computer subroutine. It can reasonably be estimated that for every functional protein molecule of about 300 amino acids, there are more than 10 to the two hundredth power possible combinations of 300 amino acids that would not result in a functional protein molecule.

This likelihood does not get any larger when we factor in so-called "natural selection" (a very misleading term because "selection" is a word meaning "choice," and so-called "natural selection" involves no choice). Small fractions of protein molecules are not functional, and provide no survival benefit and no “survival of the fittest” benefit. So so-called "natural selection" and survival of the fittest would never act to cause functional protein molecules to accumulate on the grounds of fractional parts being beneficial. Small fractions or halves of protein molecules are not beneficial, are not functional, and would not have the folds needed for proper function of protein molecules. A biology textbook tells us, "Proteins are so precisely built that the change of even a few atoms in one amino acid can sometimes disrupt the structure of the whole molecule so severely that all function is lost." And we read on a science site, "Folded proteins are actually fragile structures, which can easily denature, or unfold." Another science site tells us, "Proteins are fragile molecules that are remarkably sensitive to changes in structure." 

We cannot explain the vast amounts of organization in human protein molecules, human cells or human anatomy through Darwinism, so-called "natural selection" or evolution.  In the scientific paper here, a Harvard scientist says, "A wide variety of protein structures exist in nature, however the evolutionary origins of this panoply of proteins remain unknown." A biologist tells us in a scientific paper, "The origins of major morphological novelties remain unsolved." Hugo de Vries (a leading botanist) once stated the following:

"Natural selection is a sieve. It creates nothing, as is so often assumed; it only sifts." 

The diagram below illustrates the point he was making. Natural selection does nothing to explain how there would originate the yellow circles that represent incredibly improbable good designs such as a protein molecule of 400+ amino acids arranged in just the right way. 

Now, it might be argued that even though a state of organization such as a functional protein molecule might be very unlikely, perhaps they just arise once every million years or so, and that once they arise, they are preserved and accumulate. But when you get into the mathematics to compute the unlikelihood of such miracles of luck occurring, we find that the math is consistently prohibitive.  Referring to only part of a protein molecule, a scientific paper says, "the overall prevalence of sequences performing a specific function by any domain-sized fold may be as low as" 1 in 10 to the seventy-seventh power.  Such odds are so prohibitive we should not expect any functional protein molecules to have ever luckily appeared in the history of our planet.  We cannot realistically assume that 20,000 such fantastically improbable miracles of luck are the explanation for the 20,000 types of functional proteins in humans. 

When we move to levels of organization higher than protein molecules, the situation becomes even worse. This is because you have a situation in which no amount of luck can explain things.  The reason is that DNA molecules in humans do not specify any of the levels of organization higher than protein molecules. Polypeptide chains somehow organize into 3D protein molecules, which somehow organize into organelles, which somehow organize into cells, which somehow organize into tissues, which somehow organize into organs, which somehow organize into organ systems.  But DNA does nothing to specify the structure of organelles or cells or organs or organ systems.  DNA seems to only half-specify protein molecules, by giving the sequence of amino acids from which they are built, but not their three-dimensional shapes. 

The failure of Darwinian methods to produce useful very complex computer programs is good evidence that Darwin did not actually produce a theory that explains the origin of any useful innovations that require very great organization. Random mutations are like random characters. You can no more produce works of great biological organization by "saving the good mutations" than you can produce great works of literature by having a random character stream and "saving the good letters." The diagram below illustrates this point. 

To help clarify the utter failure of orthodox biology to credibly explain the mountainous levels of biological organization in humans, you can go to the biology preprint server at www.biorxiv.org, and do a search for titles using the phrase "biological organization."  You will find only one paper.  That paper doesn't do anything to explain the mountainous levels of biological organization in humans, but at least it does a good job of mentioning the vastness of that organization:

"Organization is a key characteristic of biological entities and phenomena. It appears everywhere: from simple oscillatory chemical reactions and the structure of macro-molecules to cells’ activation-inhibition and consensus bio-chemical setups, moving molecular aggregates, modules and motifs with associated biological functions, and stable organelles. It expands beyond cell organelles and cell inner structures into tissues and organs of multicellular organisms and further upward into populations, societies and cultures, although its instantiation at each scale may present seemingly uncorrelated forms." 

Using the phrase "are only beginning to be deciphered" which means in effect "we do not understand such a thing," another paper states this:

"The spatio-temporal organization, coherence and complexity found in biological systems appear overwhelming and their underlying principles are only beginning to be deciphered. It is widely accepted that these principles must be based on more fundamental ones originating at the submolecular or molecular level."

The "widely accepted" idea mentioned makes no sense, there being no reason at all why mere molecules would know how to organize themselves into vastly more complicated levels of organization such as organelles, cells, tissues, organs and organ systems. The diagram below only gives you a faint shadow of an idea of how great are the interlocking dependencies within biological systems, involving many "which came first, the chicken or the egg" types of problems. 

A very crucial issue in regard to explaining the enormous organization of human bodies is the question of whether there is any known explanation for morphogenesis, the progression from a mere speck-sized egg to a newly born human baby. Material science has no explanation for this wonder of organization, which is vastly more impressive than a tornado forming a fully functional new house with plumbing and electricity from swirling wreckage of a thousand floating parts.  

For many years scientists have told us a very childish lie about this topic: the lie that a human body arises in the womb because a blueprint for making a human is read from DNA.  There is no such blueprint or recipe of program for making human bodies in DNA. DNA only contains low-level chemical information such as which sequences of amino acids make up particular proteins. DNA does not specify how to make a human form, or any organ system, or any organ. DNA does not even specify how to make any of the roughly 200 types of cells in the human body, each of which is an enormously organized state of matter.  

The claim that full-grown organisms arise because a DNA blueprint is read is a claim that is both false and very childish, like a very small child's claim that astronauts first got to the moon by riding a big balloon.  Just as a balloon built to reach the moon would never get there (not rising after it left the atmosphere), if there existed in DNA a blueprint for building humans it would not give rise to organisms, because blueprints don't cause things to be built. Construction only occurs by means of a blueprint because there is a construction crew that reads and understands the blueprint instructions, and carries them out. We know of nothing below the neck of a female that could read and understand and execute fantastically complicated instructions for building hierarchically-organized humans if such instructions happened to exist in DNA, which actually only contains low-level chemical information, not instructions for constructing anatomy.  

The shortfall of today's scientists in explaining the origin of human bodies is an extremely gigantic shortfall.  Everything indicates that they are on the wrong track and have made key assumptions that are fundamentally false, such as the untenable claim that the huge levels of organization in a body can be explained by low-level bottom-up chemical factors.  The fact that many lies and misleading statements have been repeatedly issued by such authorities is a very large sign that their approaches at attempting to explain the physical structure of humans is a very great failure.  The attempts of today's scientists to explain the fantastically organized and purposeful arrangement of the human body merely by evoking low-level chemical and physics factors can be well-described as a pathetic farce, like someone trying to explain the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel as the result of a million tiny accidental paint splashes.

Humans know how to make giant skyscrapers fully equipped with plumbing and electricity,  but there is no team of scientists that could construct a full-grown human body molecule by molecule. Part of the reason is that such a job would be incomparably more difficult than constructing a static thing, because of the vast internal dynamism in a human body.  A human body may be compared to some huge complex of factories that are each humming with very many types of manufacturing activity. Each of the cells is like its own factory, or like a factory that is being partially remodeled and partially torn down as it manufactures a host of products. This is an additional reason why the "DNA as blueprint" metaphor is nonsense. You could never make a human body with a mere blueprint, or even a stack of blueprints, which would merely allow you to construct a static thing, not something as internally dynamic as a human body. 

It should come as no surprise that today's scientists are lacking in any explanation of human reproduction when we consider that they lack a credible explanation of something incomparably simpler: a credible explanation of what causes cells to reproduce. As discussed here,  scientists lack any credible explanation of the basic fact of cell reproduction. At the link we read an expert compare the complexity of a cell to the complexity of an airplane. Each time a eukaryotic cell reproduces, it is a wonder as impressive as an airplane splitting into two functional flying airplanes.  

The Mental Nature of Humans: A Wealth of Common and Uncommon Capabilities That Cannot Be Explained by Brain Activity

The table below discusses some human mental capabilities, common and uncommon, and why they cannot be explained as being caused by brain activity. 

Human Mental Capability or Mental Characteristic or Mental Phenomenon	Why It Cannot Be Explained as a Brain Effect or Explained Under a “Brains Create Minds” Assumption
Humans have a unified sense of self, which usually persists with great constancy throughout a human's life.	There is no reason why the fluctuating stream of neuron electrical activity or chemical activity (billions of little microscopic events every second) should ever give rise to a unified sense of self.
Humans can instantly form new long-term memories after a single exposure to sensory phenomena (as you can see by the fact that you will have a good chance of remembering the plot of some movie you saw only once).	There is no theory of memory storage that properly accounts for the instant creation of new memories. Prevailing ideas such as “synapse strengthening” describe a process that would never work instantaneously, and would require at least several minutes for the formation of a new memory.
After hearing a single word or seeing a single image, humans can instantly remember something they learned very long ago.	Instant recall is totally inexplicable under the idea of a brain storage of memories. From human work in constructing computers that can instantly retrieve information, humans know the kind of things a brain would need to have to be capable of instant recall: things such as indexes or a coordinate system or a position notation system. The brain has no such things. The very strong slowing factor of synaptic delays should make instant recall of a brain-stored memory impossible.
Humans can remember very well things they learned 50 or more years ago, and they can remember very well things that they experienced 50 or more years ago.	The preservation of memories for more than a few weeks is inexplicable under the idea of a brain storage of memories. The proteins that make up synapses (claimed to be a storage place of memories) have an average lifetime of only a few weeks. There is no place in the brain that is a credible site for the storage of memories lasting decades.
Humans can form new abstract ideas.	Nothing that we know about the brain can explain the phenomenon of abstract idea creation.
Humans can form memories of very diverse types: episodic memories, sensory memories, emotional memories, physical skill memories, and memories of learned information of many different types (verbal, visual, musical, algorithmic,  historical and conceptual).	No one has ever found any credible evidence of memory information in brain tissue; we cannot read any memories from dead people;  and no one has any credible theory of how episodic memories or information learned in school could be translated into neural states or synapse states. Neither in the genome nor in the brain is there any sign of any neural code by which memories could be  translated into neural states or synapse states; but if there was such a code, it would have a massive "footprint" that would have resulted in its detection decades ago.
A human can fall deeply in love with another human, and stay in love with that person for years; or a human may develop some bitter hatred that persists for many years.	Being subject to such high levels of rapid molecular turnover and rapid structural remodeling on the low levels of synapse proteins and dendritic spines, a brain has no characteristics that would explain stable, long-lasting emotions persisting for many years.
Humans are capable of extremely deep philosophical thinking and very complex mathematical thinking.	Nothing in a brain can explain such a thing, nor is there any kind of “natural selection” reason why humans would have such capabilities, which do nothing to improve human survival.
Very many humans (as many as 10% to 25% or more) have  out-of-body experiences in which they have kind of floated out of their bodies, and seen their own bodies from a position above their bodies.	This phenomenon is completely inexplicable under claims that your brain is the source of your mind, and the phenomenon directly contradicts such claims, strongly suggesting they are false.
Humans can form beliefs that persist for decades.	There is no understanding of how a brain could cause the formation of long-lasting beliefs, nor is there any evidence that beliefs can be  changed by any surgery on brains or by taking drugs that modify the chemistry of brains. For example, there is no pill or surgery that will cause you to switch from being a Christian to being an agnostic, or cause you to switch from Republican political beliefs to some other political views.
Some "math savant" humans with "hypercalculia" (such as Zerah Colburn and Jacques Inaudi) can or could do very complex and accurate math calculations "in their heads" at extremely high speeds.	The unreliability of synaptic transmission (in which there is only a 50% or smaller chance of a signal crossing a synapse) should prevent very accurate and complex mental calculation if it was performed in your brain. While some signals (such as pain signals and sensory signals) can travel at fast speeds, synaptic delays should mean that the average brain signal moves too slowly to allow for very fast thinking.
Human memories and acquired knowledge are often well preserved after half of a brain is surgically removed in hemispherectomy operations to stop very frequent epileptic seizures.	This result is very much inconsistent with claims that memories are stored in the brain.
Humans can recall with 100% accuracy very large bodies of memorized information, such as when Hamlet actors or Wagnerian tenors recall perfectly all words of their very lengthy roles, or when Islamic scholars recall every word of their holy book.	A variety of very severe sources of signal noise in the brain (discussed here and here) should prevent any such thing from happening if memories are brain stored.
As discussed here, here, here, here and here, we have two hundred years of accounts of people (particularly hypnotized subjects or subjects in a trance) who displayed clairvoyance, often being able to accurately describe places they had never visited or heard about.	This phenomenon is completely inexplicable under the hypothesis that the brain is the source of the human mind.
There are hundreds of cases of normal people who saw an apparition of someone who died, and then later learned the person had died at the same time of the apparition sighting.	Such a reality is not explained by any theory that brains create our minds, and is not credibly explained by any theory of hallucination, as each case would require a fantastically improbable coincidence.
There are many cases of the same apparition being seen by multiple witnesses at the same time.	Such a reality is not explained by any theory that brains create our minds, and is not credibly explained by any theory of hallucination, as each such case would require a fantastically improbable coincidence.
Some humans who have lost the great majority of their brains because of diseases such as hydrocephalus have average or above-average intelligence, as documented by Lorber.	This reality is completely inexplicable under current assumptions that the mind is merely the product of the brain.
When the corpus callosum (the band of nerve fibers connecting the two brain hemispheres) is severed,  this does not result in split-personality persons with two selves. There still remains a single unified self.	This result is the exact opposite of what we would expect from the idea that the brain makes the mind.
Some rare humans such as autistic savants have displayed powers of memory many times greater than an average human, such as Kim Peek who knew very well the contents of 10,000 + books he had read, savants who can play back perfectly any song they hear, a person such as Stephen Wiltshire who can make accurate drawings of skylines he has seen only once,  and those with hyperthymesia who can remember almost every day of their adult life.	Such effects are inexplicable under the "brains make minds" idea, since the people displaying such abilities do not have larger brains, and sometimes have severely damaged brains.

Because of such discrepancies, it is very clear that the human mind is not correctly explained as being a mere product of the brain. 

A Cause Adequate to Explain the Origination of Human Bodies: The Global Organizing Activity of a Life-Force (GOAL)

The failure of attempts to explain the origin of human bodies by bottom-up low-level chemical factors is the most gigantic shortfall, as great as the shortfall of someone who tries to explain the continued phenomenon of large building construction by evoking little principles such as "stuff sticks together" or "bricks can pile up."  To have a credible hypothesis of the origin of dynamic physical states of vast organization such as the human body,  we must assume a purposeful top-down organizational effect. Given a lack of anything in a human body that explains the full reproduction of a human (not to be confused with mere pregnancy), it is utterly insufficient to assume that such a purposeful organizational effect merely acted in the past. We should assume that such a purposeful organizational effect acts continuously throughout all of our lives, and acts across all parts of the planet in which large superbly organized organisms exist.  A good acronym to describe such a reality is the acronym GOAL, which stands for Global Organizing Activity of a Life-Force. Such an acronym is suitable, given the dramatically teleological and purposefulness of such an agency. 

We need to postulate such a GOAL force acting not just long ago but every day. One reason is that across the globe inside millions of pregnant women there is unfolding every day the mysterious process of morphogenesis, the progression from a speck-sized egg to a full-sized baby.  Nothing understood by chemists or biologists can explain such miracles of organization occurring in bodies in which DNA does not specify any high-level structural information.  Although they have classified various stages in cellular reproduction such as anaphase and prophase, our scientists cannot even credibly explain what causes the reproduction of any eukaryotic cell in the human body.  (A search on the biology preprint server for papers with "kidney" in the title returns 250 matches, but searching for  papers with "cell reproduction" in the title returns only one match.)  Diagrams of the stages of cell reproduction make cell reproduction look a thousand times simpler than it is,  since they depict cells with only a few organelles, even though eukaryotic cells have hundreds or thousands of organelles of quite a few different types.  

Inside the human body there continuously occurs the mysterious phenomenon of protein folding.  Our DNA specifies the linear polypeptide sequences of more than 20,000 proteins used by the human body. But such proteins have intricate three-dimensional shapes, and there is no good evidence that DNA specifies the three-dimensional shape of any protein. The diagram below shows the difference between a polypeptide chain and a protein that results from that chain after protein folding occurs.

Although there has been some limited partial success in predicting the 3D shapes of protein molecules using their amino acid sequences (and also a huge database of many thousands of amino acid sequences and their corresponding 3D shapes), no scientist has anything like an understanding of how the 3D shapes of protein molecules are able to arise from DNA molecules that merely specify sequences of amino acids.  The mystery of protein folding is still unsolved. It would seem logical to presume that the same mysterious organizational activity needed to explain morphogenesis and human reproduction is also at work continuously in each of our bodies, to achieve the protein folding that continuously occurs in our bodies.

Should we assume that such a GOAL effect is produced directly by some all-powerful supernatural mind? Such an assumption may or may not be correct. There are quite a few different possibilities, and it would be best to think of such a GOAL agency in vague and imprecise terms, given our lack of knowledge. Such a biological organization effect might be produced directly by the continuous willful action of one or more supernatural agents. Or it could be produced by some intermediate agency or causal apparatus set up by some supernatural agent.  We know that humans can set up automated programs to achieve particular effects. Conceivably there could be some kind of automated agency that achieves biological targets and maintains the biological order in organisms.  Once it had been established, such an agency might not require further willful effort from the agent that created it. 

In his book The world of life : a manifestation of creative power, directive mind and ultimate purpose, Alfred Russel Wallace (co-founder of the theory of evolution by natural selection) made some statements that are quite the opposite of some of the claims of today's champions of such a theory.  Below (from page 337 of the book) is one of those statements. As you read the statement, keep in mind that DNA does not specify the physical structure of any of the 200 types of cells in human beings, and that DNA is no answer to the "organized by what" question being raised. 

"The cell is now defined as 'a nucleated unit-mass of living protoplasm.' It is not a mere particle of protoplasm, but is an organised structure. We are again compelled to ask, Organised by what? Huxley, as we have seen in Chapter XV., tells us that 
life is the organising power ; Kerner termed it a vital 
force ; Haeckel, a cell-soul, but unconscious, and he 
postulated a similar soul in each organic molecule, and 
even in each atom of matter. But none of these verbal 
suggestions go to the root of the matter ; none of them 
suppose more than some  'force,' and force is a cause of 
motion in matter, not a cause of organisation. What we 
must assume in this case is not merely a force, but some 
agency which can and does so apply, and direct, and guide, 
and co-ordinate a great variety of forces mechanical, 
chemical, and vital so as to build up that infinitely complex machine, the living organism, which is not only self- 
repairing during the normal period of existence, but self- 
renewing, self-multiplying, self-adapting to its ever-changing 
environment, so as to be, potentially, everlasting. To do 
all this, I submit, neither 'life' nor 'vital force' nor the 
unconscious 'cell-soul' are adequate explanations. What 
we absolutely require and must postulate is, a Mind far 
higher, greater, more powerful than any of the fragmentary 
minds we see around us, a Mind not only adequate to 
direct and regulate all the forces at work in living 
organisms, but which is itself the source of all those forces 
and energies, as well as of the more fundamental forces 
of the whole material universe."

In such a statement, Wallace very much suggests the need to postulate something like the Global Organizing Activity of a Life-Force (GOAL) that I postulate here,  something far more organizational and directive than some simple force such as gravity.  Nothing we have learned about DNA invalidates any of Wallace's statement.  In fact, because scientists during the past 100 years have continually discovered ever-more-astonishing wonders of organization, coordination and very precise fine-tuned activity most abundantly in cells and organisms,  which they have almost entirely failed to credibly explain,  Wallace's statement quoted above may be more applicable than ever.  Now that we know cells are a thousand times more organized than Wallace ever dreamed, reasoning like the paragraph I just quoted seems more "on the right track" than ever.   

Like some person who doesn't know about TV production studios and TV cameras and who very wrongly assumes that everything he sees on his TV must be produced only by the tiny components inside his TV,  our scientists are stuck on the silly idea that the magnificent hierarchical organization and fine-tuned dynamism of human bodies can be explained by some "bottom-up" effects in which breathtaking miracles of organization and staggering wonders of cellular choreography bubble up from mere tiny chemicals.  The GOAL concept is the entirely different idea that we can only explain such mountainous levels of hierarchical organization and fine-tuned dynamism by assuming a "top-down" effect, by which human bodies get organized by some unfathomable agency coming in some sense  from outside of human bodies.  A person thinking along the lines of the GOAL concept is like a person who correctly realizes that the components inside a TV are utterly inadequate to explain the visuals shown by the TV, and that such visuals must have been produced by some causal agency outside of the TV. 

How did our scientists fail to see the need to postulate such a GOAL effect to explain the otherwise inexplicable reproduction of large incredibly organized organisms?  I can give three main reasons. The first is that many scientists (like very many non-scientists) confused the very easy task of explaining the beginning of pregnancy with the almost infinitely more difficult task of explaining human reproduction and morphogenesis. The second reason is that scientists made the mistake of assuming that any wonder that occurs most of the time or very often must somehow be something that is a result of laws of nature. 

We can imagine a similar thing happening on another planet. Let us imagine a planet called Providentia in which whenever someone jumps from a high height, he always lands gently without damage; and whenever someone is very hungry outdoors without food, a nice meal falls from the sky, slowly descending so the person can catch the food. If such things had always been observed on the planet, the scientists on the planet might think such things were not too special. They might say there is simply a "Law of Gentle Landings" that explains the lack of injury from cliff falls, and a "Law of Convenient Meal Deliveries" that explains the descent of meals from the sky to hungry persons.  They might think such things are nothing special, and no evidence of any work from some higher power.  This would be a case of failing to see the providential nature of a very impressive result, simply because such a result always happens.  

Just such a thing seems to occur when earthly scientists ponder human reproduction.  What occurs on Earth every year is almost infinitely more impressive and wondrous than the events I imagine above occurring on the planet Providentia. The gradual growth from a speck-sized egg to the gigantically organized reality of a full human body is actually a wonder a billion times more impressive than someone falling from a high cliff without injury or meals conveniently descending from the sky to the hands of hungry people.  But just like the scientists of Providentia,  our scientists take such a wonder for granted,  because it occurs so often. 

The third reason why our scientists have failed to see the need to postulate such a GOAL agency is because they deluded themselves with childish tall tales such as the bunk claim that human bodies arise from blueprints for making humans stored in DNA.  The fact that such a tale bears no resemblance to the truth (DNA containing no such blueprint) is a sign of very great dsyfunction within biological academia.  Whenever you see some group telling outrageous lies, you should suspect that such a group is very much on the wrong track, and you should be open to explanations that are diametrically opposed to the explanations that have been offered by such people.   

A Cause Adequate to Explain Human Minds: A Currently Unfathomable Source of Human Souls

To explain the human mind, we must postulate some currently unfathomable causal reality capable of supplying human beings with souls. We should postulate that all of the more impressive aspects of human mentality are soul effects rather than brain effects.   We should assume that we think with our souls, imagine with our souls, and remember with our souls.  We should stop attributing to the brain capabilities that it cannot have given its very many physical limitations and high molecular turnover and low-level structural inconstancy. 

Once we have made such a correction in our thinking, we can stop the nonsense of ignoring a vast amount of observational evidence for paranormal phenomena.  We should recognize the human soul as a mysterious thing with unknown limitations.  Studying hundreds of long volumes senselessly ignored by almost all of today's scientists, we should study evidence for human psychic capabilities such as clairvoyance, ESP and out-of-body experiences.  Once we have discarded the never-warranted claim that brains make minds, we will be able to study such volumes without discarding all the evidence by the excuse of "that can't happen because brains can't do that," and will be thinking "this might have happened because we don't know what the limits of souls are."

Some people refuse to accept the idea of a human soul because to them it seems old-fashioned. But there has been no decline of reports in which people claim to have floated out of their bodies and seen their bodies from a position two meters of more above such bodies.  In fact, most of the very many reports we have of such a phenomenon date from the past hundred years, and there been has no drop off of such reports in recent decades (with some of them involving correct observations that should have been impossible to the observer from his body). In accounts of near-death experiences in recent decades, a good fraction of the subjects report viewing their body from outside of it.  So dismissing the possibility of a soul because it is an old idea makes no more sense than  dismissing the existence of dinner banquets because dinner banquets were reported in ancient times, saying "the concept of dinner banquets is too old for us modern people to believe in."  We have abundant modern evidence for both souls and dinner banquets.  The main evidence for souls is not observations of the paranormal, but everyday observations of a host of ordinary mental phenomena that cannot be credibly explained as brain phenomena, largely because of physical limitations of the brain and very rapid molecular turnover in the brain. 

How Explanatory Biology Went So Wrong

If you believe in the type of explanations discussed above, you must  believe that explanatory biology has gone very far astray,  and has for many decades been teaching fundamentally wrong ideas about the origin of human bodies, the origin of the human race and the origin of human minds.  There is nothing particularly far-fetched in such a possibility.  Biology departments of modern universities are conformist belief communities in which we see very strong "follow the herd" effects and "kneeling to authority" effects. Throughout history many overconfident conformist belief communities have again and again taught with great assurance many incorrect or disastrous ideas. 

To explain how easy for it a modern branch of science to go far astray, let us consider a not very far-fetched alternate history for biology. Imagine if a dogma had started to arise about 1870 that most physical and mental diseases are caused by subterranean gases, gases seeping up from underground. We can imagine Departments of Subterranean Effects arising all over the universities and colleges of the United States and Europe.

We might then have seen the following:

• Very overconfident Professors of Subterranean Effects might have arisen, writing many a learned volume teaching that most diseases are caused by gases seeping up from underground,  impressing us by mixing up such a doctrine with countless statements of observational fact. 
• Advances in drugs might all have been woven into the claims of professors of Subterranean Effects.  When a drug such as penicillin worked, the explanation might have been that it tended to help weaken the effects of subterranean gases. 
• Learned professors might make claims that nothing in medicine makes sense except in the light of the theory of Subterranean Effects. 
• Professors might spend endless hours pouring over X-ray images and CAT scan images and MRI images, claiming to detect very faint traces of gases from underground or their effects, like someone looking at the clouds and saying he sees an animal, or like modern neuroscientists spending endless hours scanning MRI images looking for "statistically significant correlations" with some cognitive activity. 
• Biology departments might make sure that they stay populated by believers in the theory that most diseases are caused by gases from underground.  They would vote to grant tenure only to new professors who believed in such a theory.
• The professors of Subterranean Effects might have come up with all kinds of convoluted contorted arguments to try to explain why so many cases that look like they are not caused by gases coming from underground really are caused by such things.  
• Contrarian thinkers believing in alternate ideas (such as the idea that diseases such as syphilis and malaria are caused by earthly microbes) might be labeled as "kooks," "crackpots," and "frauds."  Their literature (kept out of mainstream journals) would go unread by the professors of Subterranean Effects, who would say that it is pointless to study such papers because it is "well-known and well-established" that diseases such as syphilis and malaria and schizophrenia are caused by gases from underground. Such believers would act just like modern psychologists and neuroscientists failing to study evidence of the paranormal, claiming the impossibility of such effects is "well known" or "commonly acknowledged." 
• The professors claiming that most diseases are caused by underground gases would argue that because some measurements have been made of gases from underground, that anyone who doubts that most diseases are caused by underground gases is a "science denier."

There is nothing very implausible about all of the above happening as an alternate history. It would be a simple case of the occurrence of very common sociological and psychological effects, involving enthusiastic overconfidence,  snowball effects or Matthew effects whereby bad ideas can spread like a virus, helped by groupthink, majoritarian departmental politics and "follow-the-herd" tendencies.  As the old saying goes, "error circles the globe while truth is still putting on its boots." Or to use a modern phrase, bunk can "go viral" very quickly. 

Something very much like the scenario above did happen, except that instead of a sociological herd effect and snowball effect leading to the triumph of a bunk explanation of most diseases being caused by underground gases, instead a sociological herd effect and snowball effect led to the triumph of the  bunk explanations of Darwinism, the bunk explanation of human bodies arising from a reading of a DNA blueprint, and the bunk explanation that minds arise from brains and that memories are stored in brains.  

We need imagine nothing very unusual to explain how biology academia could have got things so wrong.  We need merely imagine that garden-variety sociological and psychological effects occurred as they have so often occurred throughout history.  An overconfident authority appeared with a simplistic "this explains it all" idea, and such a person was put on a pedestal, just as a hundred previous overconfident thinkers were put on pedestals by belief communities that wanted a nice, simple explanation.  A group of people yearning for some explanatory stories that would allow them to avoid believing in anything higher than themselves jumped eagerly to embrace pretty much the first such explanations offered.  Professors yearning to portray themselves as  Grand Lords of Explanation started claiming they understood the great mystery of biological origins, just as a thousand previous priests or preachers or visionaries or doctrinaires had portrayed  themselves as Grand Lords of Explanation with some glorious special insight. Millions started to believe the nice simple claims that humans arose merely because of random mutations, and that all mental phenomena come from the brain and that memories are stored in brains, largely because people like nice simple explanations, and people like to look up reverently to authorities (whether priests, presidents or professors) that have been put on pedestals.   

There are two ways of showing just how wrong "grand explanatory" biologists have gone. The first way is to describe just how much the explanations of such biologists fail to explain the physical reality of human bodies and human reproduction and the normal and uncommon mental reality of human minds.  The post here and the posts here and here and here and here and here describe that shortfall in great detail.  The second way to show just how wrong "grand explanatory" biology has gone is to make a list of all the deceptive and misleading statements that have been made by the "grand explanation" professors advancing today's biology dogmas.  The post here and the post here describe at great length an extremely large degree of deception from such persons that only can happen when people have gone very, very wrong. 

GOAL Effects Seem Reasonable Given the Reality of Aquatic Mega-Patternization 

Morphogenesis (the progression from a speck-sized cell to the enormously more organized state of the human body) is a kind of slow-motion miracle.  Because it occurs spread out over nine months,  we may fail to see the wonder of it. But what if we were to observe the instantaneous occurrence of some change in matter that could never be accounted  for without assuming the work of some unseen agent with the ability to organize matter in some extremely precise and rapid way? Although not involving life, such observations would  help to show that inexplicable very fast organization effects by an unseen agency are very much real and not at all impossible. 

Exactly such observations have occurred in very great abundance, and photographs of such a reality can be abundantly viewed online using links such as here, here, here, here, here and here.  I refer here to the effect I have called aquatic mega-patternization. It occurs when photographs of falling drops of pure, clean water each show multiple instances of very noticeable patterns that persist (against all expectations) through most of very many consecutive photos.  I first started to publish photos of such an effect in 2015, and I have been publishing many thousands of authentic photos of such an effect for six years.  I have never earned any net income from such photography, which has cost me a few thousand dollars in photographic expenses (the photography requiring expensive cameras that tend to stop working about every six months or so). 

Below is an example, occurring on one of hundreds of days  in which a face-like pattern appeared and persisted through most of  many consecutive photos I took of clean, pure water drops falling in front of a black background.  Patterns that do not resemble faces are very much more common. 

By now the reality of this phenomenon has been enormously documented by many thousands of authentic photos that I have published online at a fairly constant pace over the course of six years, which that can be viewed at the links above.  By using the link here (and continuing to press Older Posts at the bottom right of the page) you can view more than 600 water photography blog posts I have made, each of which shows an inexplicable pattern appearing multiple times in the same photo, with such a repetition also occurring in multiple other photos on the same day. Typically in such cases the inexplicable pattern persisted through most of more than 50 consecutive photos, with the pattern very often repeating through most of hundreds of consecutive photos. For example, on one day the "exclamation mark" pattern appeared in more than 150 photos, with more than 500 mysterious "exclamation marks" appearing. We see below one example. 

We would not expect such a degree of pattern repetition as I have documented to occur by mere chance for any photographer if every planet in the universe was populated by billions of photographers who spent their whole lives photographing falling water drops.  

In addition to publishing many thousands of photos showing such inexplicable pattern effects occurring during photography of falling drops, patterns that have appeared most dramatically in endless impressive varieties, I have also published several long videos showing my camera viewfinder as I photographed such inexplicable patterns (as you can see by looking at the Videos section of the page here, and following the links).  No one could fake such videos without huge special effects expenditures that would be many times higher than my annual income.  If you use a utility such as ffmpeg to make a frame-by-frame analysis of such videos, you will find that they will hold up perfectly well to any level of scrutiny you may apply to them. 

We see in these many thousands of published photos and these long videos a dramatic paranormal effect that is quite inexplicable without assuming the agency of some mysterious unseen power, one that has extremely precise control over matter.  Given so many photos of this type,  we should regard it as well-established that some unseen power or agency can manipulate matter with an extremely precise and fast control.  Knowing of such a reality, and lacking any credible "bottom-up" explanation for morphogenesis, we should not hesitate to postulate some unseen agency that produces the gigantic organizational effects that occur every time a new human body (a state of fantastically high physical organization) comes into the world, growing from the incomparably less organized state of a speck-sized human egg. 

I am not the only person to document a relatively rapid paranormal effect that suggests the existence of some unseen agency with enormous and precise power over matter.  Many observers have documented an effect called materialization, under which short-lived human forms (full or partial) can appear.  You can read about previous observations of such an effect by reading the five posts here.  Among the observers who very carefully documented such as effect was one of the greatest scientists of the nineteenth century, Sir William Crookes, who was the co-discoverer of the element thallium, and the inventor of the Crookes tube that was the forerunner of all modern digitial display devices.  The same effect was reported by Alfred Russel Wallace, also one of the greatest scientists of the nineteenth century. Almost equally dramatic as such things is the non-aquatic orb-striping effect I have got 800+ times while photographing in clean, dry air with a variety of cameras, with a very substantial and inexplicable pattern repetition effect shown here. 

We know that enormous destructive effects can be produced by tiny causes, for the splitting of a single atom can lead to the nuclear destruction of a city; and a little pounding on a mountain top can start an avalanche that buries a mountain village. But there has never been even a speck of good evidence that enormous constructive hierarchical organizational effects of any type can be produced by tiny measly causes. To credibly explain mountainous levels of constructive hierarchical organization such as we see in human bodies, we must postulate some cause as impressive or more impressive than such causal results. To credibly explain human minds with a great wealth of wondrous capabilities (normal and paranormal), most of which cannot plausibly be explained neurally, we must postulate some mysterious causal agency as impressive or more impressive than such causal results. 

Postscript: See my long post "Biologists Understand Neither the Origin Nor the Continuation of Any Adult Body" for a discussion of issues relevant to this post, and the failure of attempts to explain protein folding by some Anfinsen's Dogma of mere energy minimization. 

A Theory of Warning Dreams in the Last Year of Life

In this post I will advance a speculative theory that I cannot advance with a very high confidence, because parts of the theory are not supported by an abundance of observations from many different observers. But the theory is based on some things I have read and some things I have personally experienced.  I have reason to suspect that the theory may well be true in whole or in part. I will not be able to provide good evidence to support each part of the theory. But I will at least be able to cite a few things that may be reasons for suspecting particular parts of the theory are true.  

The theory I will present is largely based on my own dream experiences of having extremely thematic and non-random dreams throughout a roughly nine-month period, as discussed in the very long post here (a post that originally appeared in February 2021, but which I updated on very many days between that month and August 2021).  The relevance of such death-related dreams to a theory of dreams in the last year of life is unclear, because I don't know at what time I will die. If my death occurs in the year 2021 (something I have no reason to suspect based on purely medical reasons), then you should more strongly suspect that the theory below is partially or largely accurate. But if you eventually read posts of mine written long after January 1, 2022 (such as posts written in the years 2023 or 2024), you should be a little less likely to believe in the theory discussed below. 

Hypothesis #1:  rather than being purely random content, dreams may partially reflect telepathic messages sent to the dreamer, or clairvoyant activity of a dreamer.

There is a very strong evidence basis for believing that psi phenomena such as ESP and clairvoyance may occur more commonly under altered states of consciousness.  Throughout most of the nineteenth century and well into the twentieth century, there were published innumerable lengthy reports of clairvoyance occurring in states of hypnosis (which may have been referred to by various names such as Mesmerism, animal magnetism or somnambulism).  You can read some of these reports here and  here and here and here and here. 

In the twentieth century there were very many reports of ESP or clairvoyance or "remote viewing" (pretty much the same as clairvoyance) occurring during slightly altered consciousness states such as what is called the Ganzfeld protocol (a sensory deprivation protocol) or a remote viewing protocol involving a slightly altered state of consciousness.  There has been considerable evidence (experimental or anecdotal) for telepathic effects or clairvoyant effects occurring during dreaming.  You can read here about some of the laboratory evidence for ESP during dreaming, which was mainly collected at the Maimonides laboratory in the 20th century.  The meta-analysis here finds highly significant evidence for ESP during dreaming. 

Hypothesis #2:  there may exist unseen entities capable of knowing things about a person's future or the state of a person's body or health that are unknown to the person, including a time when a person is most likely to die, or possibly even the exact date when a person will die. 

This part of my theory may be the most speculative. The idea is that there exist one or more entities unseen by you who may know something about your health or your future that you do not know. Such an entity or entities may be divine, angelic, spiritual or extra-dimensional.  They may or may not be the spirits of people who once lived on Earth. 

I can imagine several different ways in which such knowledge might be acquired. On one hand there is the idea of some kind Book of Fate or Book of Destiny in which might be written (clearly or not-so-clearly) the earthly fates of individual people. Or, to imagine a very different idea, it might be possible through some paranormal means for some unseen entities to acquire knowledge giving an idea about a person's expected time of death. 

An idea very widely stated in the literature of the paranormal is that humans have some kind of aura or energy field (or possible multiple auras or energy fields) that can be perceived in some way different from ordinary vision, and that by kind of "reading" or perceiving such indications, an idea can be reached about a person's state of health or future lifespan. It could be that unseen entities or powers are capable of leveraging such an indication or indications, to be able to get some idea about when a person is likely to die.  Such indications might be very unreliable when someone is in his youth, but far more reliable when a person is in the last year of his life. 

I am familiar with a well-documented and weighty case in the literature of the paranormal that may provide evidence in favor of Hypothesis #2. The case is described on page 432 of Volume 11 of the Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research, which quotes the November 1, 1890 edition of the Religio-Philosphical Journal. You can find the original source account by opening this link, and scrolling down about nine pages until you see page 361 in the right corner (or, alternately, searching for the name Suddick).  We read a Dr. Suddick giving this account:

"Mr. Cottnam had a friend, Mr. Chris. Varis....His attendant physician, Dr. Headlee, of St. James, told Mr. Cottnam that he thought Mr. Varis could live but a few days at most, and from his appearance Mr. Cottnam was of the same opinion."

We then read about some action of a "Mr. C." (who is this Mr. Cottnam) at a "table tipping seance."  In such a seance people may put their hands on a table and ask for answers from the spirit world, which may then be following by raps on the table or a lifting of the table.  We read this:

"Mr. C. asked, ' Do you know my friend Chris. Varis, of St. James, Mo. ?' 'Yes.' ...'Will he live over to-morrow?' 'Yes.'  'Do you know when he will pass out?' 'Yes.' Then the table rocked back and forth slowly, the feet striking the floor forty times, making forty distinct raps, much to the surprise of all present, as we were expecting him [Varis] to pass out much sooner. We counted, and found that the time indicated would be October 8th ; so to make sure we were right we asked, ' ' Will he pass out on October 8th?' 'Yes.' 'In the forenoon ?' 'Yes.'  'Will a telegram be sent to me on the morning of the 8th to that effect ?' 'Yes.' "

Dr. Suddick informs us of the aftermath, in which the prediction came true exactly:

"The prediction about Mr. Varis became an open secret, and was talked of freely through the town from the morning of August 30th until October 8th, when a telegram came over the wires informing Mr. C. that Mr. Varis died that morning at six o'clock. I append a letter from Dr. Headlee, the physician who attended Mr. Varis, which corroborates the account just given. I also send the signatures of twelve of our best citizens in further confirmation, and the signatures of the sitters."

We then read testimony from  witnesses, who all sign their names to the following assertion:

"Cuba, Mo., October 15th, 1890.

To AIL WHOM IT MAY CONCERN :— This is to certify that we, the undersigned citizens of Cuba, Mo., did, prior to the death of Mr. Chris. Varis, of St. James, Mo., wliich occurred on the morning of the 8th of October, 1890, hear a prophecy to the effect that he would die on the mornmg of that day.

We heard that his death was foretold at a seance, at tlie house of Dr. S. T. Suddick, in the town of Cuba, Mo. , on the night of August the 29th, or forty days prior to that event."

The statement is signed by the following people:

• Jas. E. Hollow, jun., one of the circle of August 29th.
• Longstreet Simpson, Clerk in Store. 
• T. P. Brickey, Proprietor, Cuba Hotel.
• E. A. Evans, Real Estate Agent.
• F. R. Hardesty, Druggist.
• W. T. Hunter, Blacksmith.
• C. H. Cottnam, one of the circle of August 29th.
• Dr. V. L. Shelp, Dentist. 
• Dr. J. H. Martyn, Physician and Surgeon. 
• Geo. Askins, Hotel Clerk.
• Mrs. Louise Farley Suddick, one of the circle of August 29th.
• J. A. Rost, Shoemaker.
• J. A. Caims, Clerk in Store. 
• B. F. Johnson, Notary Public

Below is the original text of the edition of the Religio-Philosphical Journal (November 1, 1890) in which this testimony first appeared. Because the report appeared within one month of the death of Chris Varis, and because the report was corroborated by so many witnesses,  this case seems to be rather substantial evidence in support of my Hypothesis 2. 

We have in this very well-documented case what seems to be substantial evidence to support the hypothesis that there may be unseen entities who may know something about when a living human will die, knowledge that may conflict with or be at odds with the opinions of earthly humans about such a topic. 

Hypothesis #3: in his last year of his life a person may be warned that his death is not very far in the future, by means of symbolic dreams rather than an explicit warning. 

If Hypothesis #1 and Hypothesis #2 are true, then Hypothesis #3 should not seem very unlikely. The idea is that there exists some unseen power or powers who may know that a person is probably in his last year of life, and that such a power or powers may give that person a telepathic or clairvoyant warning, which the person receives in the form of symbolic dreams hinting at his upcoming death.  Under my theory, such warnings do not come as explicit warnings, such as a dream person saying, "Dave, you have only four months left to live." Instead, such warnings typically appear in a veiled and indirect way, largely through symbolism that may hint that death is not far off. We can imagine why such a warning may appear in a veiled or symbolic way: because a direct, explicit warning might create undesirable fear in the person who is in his last year of life.  

Some examples of death-suggesting dreams are:

(1) a dream in which there is some loss of electrical power, or in which an electrical device is turned off;

(2) a dream in which some electrical device or mechanical device suddenly stops working;

(3) a dream in which there is some end (possibly a sudden end) to some journey or some trip or some theatrical perfomance or some game;

(4) a dream in which someone is in a check-out line at a store ("checking out" is a slang term referring to death); 

(5) a dream using words such as "termination" or "liquidation" or other words that are synonyms for death. 

(6) a dream in which you are on a train, and you hear an announcement that the train is approaching its last stop.

 Hypothesis #4:  in his last year of life, a person may start to get many explicit references to death (something that rarely occurred before),  along with dreams in which the dream action brings the dream protagonist  right to the brink of death. 

In your last year of life, you may start to get many explicit references to death. You may hear the specific words "death," "dying," "grave," or "termination."  Also, you may commonly have dreams in which the action seems to bring you right up to a death event, stopping just short of such a death event. For example, you may dream that you are in a battle, and an enemy tank drives right up to you, with that may be the end of the dream. Or you may dream of falling off of a tall building, with the dream ending as you are plunging toward the ground.  Or you may dream a car traveling at high speed crashes into your car, with the dream ending right at the moment of the crash.  Or you may in your dream observe such things happening to other people. Or you may have a dream in which you see a grave, a tombstone, a coffin, a corpse or a funeral. It will be rather as if some external party is trying to suggest the idea of physical death to you. 

Hypothesis #5:  in his last year of life, a person may start to get many dreams that symbolically hint at life after death, such as  dreams involving crossing a river, crossing a boundary, crossing a bridge, traveling to a new place, traveling home, relocating or rising up in an elevator. 

It is quite rare to have dream in which there occurs a sentence of more than a few words. Dreams are mainly imagery, and are not very verbal. Rather than getting a sentence message such as "you are about to travel to a new realm of existence beyond the mortal realm," which might easily get mangled inside a dream, you may get imagery that symbolizes  life after death. There are many possibilities:

• You may dream of crossing a river or bridge, with the river or bridge  representing the boundary between life and death. 
• You may dream you are waiting for an elevator or rising up in an elevator, with the elevator rise representing an ascent to a higher realm of existence. 
• You may dream that you are an astronaut rising up in a rocket, with the rocket rise representing an ascent to a higher realm of existence. 
• You may dream you have just relocated to a new home or a new apartment, with the relocation representing moving to an afterlife realm.
• You may dream you are traveling to some earthly place that you most often thought of as home, such as a home that you were raised in. Accounts of near-death experiences often include a report that the place fleetingly visited felt like a person's "real home."
• You may dream you are preparing for a journey, such as packing a suitcase or buying a train ticket.  
• You may have a dream in which you are told that you have to leave by a particular time or a particular date, with such a departure symbolizing a departure from earthly life.  The time mentioned might symbolize a date. For example, if you dream that you have to meet a deceased person around 6:30, that could mean that your death may come about June 30 (June being the sixth month of the year). 

Hypothesis #6: in his last year of life a person may be symbolically warned about a common type of way he will or may die. 

A person may be warned of some way he may die. But such a warning will not be an explicit verbal warning such as "you may die of a heart attack." Instead, there may be veiled warnings that use symbolic imagery. To give some possible examples:

• A person who will die of an artery blockage may have various dreams with a motif of blockage, such as a dream of a clogged sink, or a dream of a blocked road, or a dream of walking down a stairway which is blocked for some reason. 
• A person who will die of sudden cardiac death (usually a kind of electrical failure) may have dreams of power failures in his home, or an electrical machine that suddenly stops working, or a dream of a power blackout on the street he is walking down. 
• A person who will die of cancer may have some dream involved an unwanted spreading, such as dream of lots of mice in his house, or a dream of the grass on his lawn growing up into the floor of his house, or a dream of some thing that he wanted to be small (such as a key) grow too large. 

Hypothesis #7: rarely a person may have a dream that explictly warns him of the exact way he will die or the exact day he will die. 

In support of this hypothesis, I  quote this statement from an edition of The Spiritual Magazine. 

"In Dr. Binns's Anatomy of Sleep, which the curious in such matters will find rich in material upon these subjects, we find this case : — 'A young man named John Gray, residing at Cinderford, who told his mother, before he went to the Crump Meadow coal-pits, at which he worked, that he dreamed tne preceding night (Sunday, January 14th, 1844) that, while at work, a large stone fell upon and killed him. The mother made light of the dream. Not so the dreamer, who went reluctantly to work, and not until he had returned twice to wish her good-bye. The dream was fulfilled. An immense block of stone fell upon and crushed him to death.' "

In the posts here, here and here there are additional cases of people who seemed to get explicit dream warnings of how they or others would die or when they or others would die.  Not mentioned in those posts are the cases discussed on pages 197-201 of the book here, in which four people seemed to get dream warnings of the 1976 Teton Dam collapse in Idaho, USA. Also not mentioned in those posts in the very interesting case discussed on pages 31-40 of Gardner Murphy's Challenge of Psychical Research, in which Walter F. Prince had a dream of a beheading of a woman, with such a very rare event happening about six miles away within 24 hours, as a mentally ill woman placed her neck so that a train could decapitate her.  Although the Prince case and the Teton Dam cases do not support the idea of an individual dreaming of the exact details of his own death, they support the idea that someone can have a dream about the exact details of someone else's death that soon occurs. 

Hypothesis #8: in his last year a person may have an unusally high number of dreams about deceased people, often deceased family members, deceased pets, deceased friends and deceased famous people. 

In the last year of life a person may dream more commonly about deceased people than about living people. Such a person may have many dreams about deceased family members.  Having a dream in which there is a very small distance between the person and the deceased family member (or no distance at all, with direct physical contact) may be a sign that death is only a few months or weeks away.  In the last year of life a person may get many dreams of very obscure deceased people the person has not thought of or read about for many years. 

A study of the dreams or visions of 60 terminally ill patients in India reported that 78.9% "reported seeing 'deceased' people, be it relatives, friends or acquaintances," while only 31.5% "saw living friends and relatives."  Rather interestingly, the study mentioned a high level of visions of the deceased when a person was awake, although that is beyond the scope of this post.  A study of about 59 American terminally ill patients also found that dreams or visions of the deceased occurred more commonly than dreams of the living, particularly as the person approached death (see Figure 2 to see the ratios). 

Hypothesis #9: the phenomena listed above may not be commonly reported because people rarely write down their dreams or rarely look for patterns in their dreams, or possibly because dream warnings are not sent to average people who would tend to ignore them. 

How can I account for the relative rarity in which people report things like those I have listed above? That is easy to do. First, we have the fact that dreams are very quickly forgotten unless you write them down just after waking up. But very few people record their dreams upon waking up. So it might easily be that in the last year of life very many get warning dreams like those I have mentioned, but that almost all such dreams are forgotten and never recorded. It could also be that people with no interest in psychic phenomena are not sent warning dreams, because such warnings would tend to be ignored by such people. 

I have used the term "warning" in my title, although the type of dreams I discuss are mainly kind of notification or hint dreams that may  give people a "heads up" or clue or intimation about what is to come, rather than dreams meant to cause some change in behavior.  I can imagine a way to test aspects of the theory discussed in this post.  People could be paid for participation in an online survey that included many questions about dream content, and also questions about a person's age and any health conditions they have. All subjects who finished the survey could be told they will be paid three times as much for participating in a very short follow-up survey that could only be filled out one year after the first survey.  Based on the data regarding age, health conditions and participation in the second survey (and possibly based on follow-up attempts to contact those who failed to participate in the second survey), inferences could be made regarding which participants in the first  survey were in their last year of life.  A study could then look for large differences in the dream content of those who were in their last year of life.  

Don't conclude anything if you get only one or two of the things I have mentioned here.  But if you find your dreams often seem to have many of the features I have discussed here, consider the possibility that you may be in your last year of life, and do not be troubled by such a possibility.  Any universe in which you got paranormal telepathic dream warnings that your earthly time is almost finished would be almost certainly a universe in which you would expect to enjoy a life after death.